Angsty EP fails to break bland boundary
Sometimes life just isn’t fair. Sometimes you find yourself wondering what could have been. Sometimes you hear a band like The King Left and you think, “Man, these dudes really should have been on the ‘Twilight’ soundtrack. They’d fit right in with all of the other angsty tween alt-rock on there. They could have been huge!”
Well, until then, we’ll just have to suck on the band’s newest EP, “New York Nothing.” It offers four tracks of glossy, suburban-friendly, British post-punk a lá Franz Ferdinand combined with the worst moments of major-label Modest Mouse and a touch of bland new wave revivalism. It’s a truly uninspiring piece of New York hipster trash that does its best to play rough, but only manages a few awkward swats.
Things get started on a bad note with lead single “The Storm In A Teacup.” Vocalist Corey Oliver gets his angry Conor Oberst on. This is over a noodley guitar riff lifted from Modest Mouse’s recycling bin and a lifeless drum machine.
The full band briefly chimes in on this disaster. They use huge floor tom hits and harmonizing guitars before settling into a safe and easy disco rhythm. The song isn’t that bad from here, as it borrows a couple of melodies from The Pixies and rolls out a swell, heavily-effected guitar “solo.” But its by-the-numbers post-punk rhythms with ’90s indie rock chorus is too safe to have any bite.
Mediocre as it is, “The Storm In A Teacup” is easily the best song on “New York Nothing.” The next jams descend in decency, plumbing the depths of rock ‘n’ roll’s outhouse with “In The Sunlight” and returning to barely acceptable territory with “By The End, Juggling Wolves,” which features an almost rousing finale.
The best thing happening on “New York Nothing” is Oliver, who shoves Psychedelic Furs frontman Richard Butler’s atonal rasp through Modest Mouse main man Isaac Brock’s spastic wind pipe. Yes, there is a lot of Modest Mouse. Unfortunately, the vigor of his delivery is subdued by his awful lyrics. He spends the EP’s fifteen minutes reporting on a relationship breakup like a despondent 16 year old.
“You know, to me you’re just a vegetarian vampire, a dead ringer of the stranger I knew,” he cries in the cringe-worthy “A Dead Ringer.” But his crowning achievement comes just a few minutes later with “In The Sunlight” when he croons, “Shark bombs sail from the sky and you die with strangers in your open eyes.” Really? Shark bombs? She must have been a total B to warrant that kind of harassment.
The biggest problem with “New York Nothing” is that it wants to be dirty, but it isn’t. It’s safe and clean, and sometimes it’s just funny. Maybe next time.
Artist: The King Left
Album: “New York Nothing”
Grade: D
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on Tuesday, November 25th, 2008 at 12:42 am and is filed under Album Reviews, Arts & Entertainment, Vibe.
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